Valley Girl fever enjoyed a brief run during the early '80s, as the public's attitude toward the crazy-talking California teens progressed from amusement to irritation to disinterest over the course of roughly two weeks. But the public might have paid attention a bit longer had it flocked to 1982's The Val$, a film that affords viewers the sort of insight into foreign subcultures that can only be found in opportunistic teen-sex comedies. The Val$ may begin with one of its high-school vixens reciting a Shakespeare soliloquy, but it isn't long before she's slipping into incomprehensible Valley slang and professing a then-widespread desire to be gagged with a spoon. The girls live in ritzy neighborhoods and tool around in a Mercedes with custom "TUBUL R" license plates, but their steady regimen of frat parties and shopping leaves them deeply unsatisfied. Even late-night adventures with the president of the fraternity's beer-bong club and his inebriated cohorts fail to ease their existential ennui. Watching their parents--including beloved television icon Chuck Connors and future Republican congressman Sonny Bono--consume mountains of blow at a coke party leaves them feeling emptier than ever. All that changes, however, after they spy a Webster-like moppet selling drugs for a pair of malevolent greasers. Emboldened, the Vals follow the criminal-minded tyke to his orphanage, where they learn from wheelchair-bound proprietor John Carradine that the house will close unless it can raise $25,000, a prospect that seriously endangers its ability to continue turning a blind eye to its pint-sized residents' felonious behavior. Desperate to save the orphanage, the slang-happy teens concoct a plan to raise the money by selling the drug dealers fake cocaine, assisted by a frat meathead who's conveniently adept at cooking up counterfeit blow. The girls' plan pays off, and the film ends with the happy gang heading off to another frat party a little older, a little wiser, and a lot more skilled in the creation and distribution of synthetic narcotics.
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